Flexible materials that provide warmth have changed and matured over the years. For example, quilts at on time were thought of only as a means to keep warm or as a bed cover. Historically, a quilt is a coverlet or blanket made of two layers of fabric with a layer of cotton, wool, feathers, or down in-between. All are stitched firmly together usually in a decorative crisscross design. Today, quilts are still used for warmth and bed comforters but they are also works of art. The International Quilt Festival, Houston, Tex., 1999 evidenced the art form to which quilts have become. Quilts have become fabric mosaics depicting important events in people's lives and events in history. The quality and artistry of the quilters is comparable to traditional works of art.
Quilting has become a business, a recreational activity, and a source of joy for men and women alike. Machines to hold quilting material have evolved from a simplistic hoop positioned on a person's lap to very large quilting mechanisms used in factories. The quilting mechanisms used by individuals outside of a factory setting are generally quilting stands used to support the quilting material. In generally, these stands evolved from stretcher frames and embroidery hoops. These types of quilting frames are generally round. Quilts are inherently square or rectangular. The plurality of quilting workpieces used to produce a single quilt are inherently square because the quilt is square. Stretcher frames and embroidery hoops provided the quilter with a hands free environment but the quilter would be required to frequently reposition the quilting material because of the inherent difficulty in matching a square pattern to a round hoop.
In the past quilting machines that provide a hands free environment for the quilter had limited mobility and could only be positioned in a limited number of ways. The quilting stand was generally fixed or rigid and could not be easily moved, stored, or transported. The rigidity was thought to be necessary to support the weight of the quilting material. The engineering effort of the past equated weight to rigidity and rightly so. The strength of materials in the past is not the strength of materials today.
The engineering design of quilting machines or frames to be useful in quilting requires the frame to be multi-positionable. The multiple positions of the frame in relation to the quilter enables the quilter to quilt with both hands provided the frame can be locked into the selected position. In the past attempts were made to lock or clamp the frame in-place. These efforts failed because the locking or clamping mechanism was borrowed from another industry and did not lend itself to quilting. These clamping mechanisms were for positioning workpieces relative to a machine that would do work on selected workpieces.
It would be desirable to have an apparatus for positionally retaining flexible material that is easy to disassemble and fold into a compact unit for transport. The apparatus would have a substantially rectangular hoop or retaining mechanism to hold the flexible material. The hoop would be multi-positionable and enable an operator or user to use both hands when performing activities such as quilting. The retaining mechanism would be able to rotate 360.degree. (degrees) in the vertical plane relative to the user. The retaining mechanism would be able to rotate 360.degree. (degrees) in the horizontal plane relative to the user. The retaining mechanism would be positionally adjustable in the vertical plane relative to the user to accommodate a seated or standing user.